What is it about American films and men who won’t grow up? (Someone, somewhere, must be writing a thesis.) Here’s the latest: a low-budget indie quirkfest from first time writer-director Ryan O’Nan. He stars as Alex, a beardy guitar-playing New Yorker in his late twenties who writes tortuous faux-naïf songs about moths and mean girlfriends. If you met him in a bar, you’d make your excuses. Here, he gets 98 minutes of your life.
O’Nan heaps so-so funny humiliations on Alex – fired from his day job, chucked by his band – before sending him a saviour: weirdo musician Jim (Michael Weston). A self-styled revolutionary who plays Fisher-Price kids’ instruments, Jim drags Alex on tour and together they make beautiful plinky-plonk indie (‘The Shins meets “Sesame Street”’). It’s sweet in places, but too similar to every other eccentric film about a going-nowhere artist hiding his inner brilliance under passive-aggressive annoyingness.